SaaS Tattler Issue 6

Top SaaS Insights of the Week:

SaaS Growth

Consistently one of the most anticipated and informative bloggers, David Skok’s posts are educational, insightful and a really good read. As a supplement to his SaaS Metrics 2.0 post, the follow-up provides detailed metrics definitions. “I am often asked for the details of how to compute the various elements, such as CAC and LTV. This post gives the formulae.”

“Then, you open your eyes and look at what’s there, now, in reality: a struggling startup, a crude and buggy first version of a product. Many features are lacking. The UI is just functional enough to let people use it.” If this sounds familiar – you are not alone. Steli Efti of Close.io writes about selling vision vs reality.

You can never have enough of definitions, calculations and advice. This post, part commentary/part slide show from Avaya is about getting smart about customer lifetime value. “If your business isn’t measuring CLV, read on. Doing so could be the key to a healthier bottom line.”

Customer Experience/Relationships/Success

This is an eye-opener post by Jeannie Walters. It starts with self-awareness and segues to customer perception – you wouldn’t know there was a correlation between the two until now. “Organizations face the same challenges individuals do. It’s difficult for anyone to truly understand the actual experience their customers have.”

Idiots Guide to Customer Experience…Part One. “Please forgive the title. Being honest, it could not be more wrong; the real idiots simply carry on doing what they have always done but expect different results.” Some lessons to be learned – starting with language.

We didn’t find this start-up on Product Hunt or BetaList, we discovered it on the HubSpot blog – a post entitled Marketing Legend Guy Kawasaki Joins Cava, a Tiny Australian Startup. Wow Canva (love how you reveal your site)!

The SaaS Hot or Not List:

More Mattermark! Can you ever get enough? Mattermark provides featured searches and we found them of big interest. So these are some of the companies from the list that are deemed Competitive Series A Candidates – High Growth, Have Not Raised in 18 Months:

Crunchinator Crunches:

And this week we crunched some more! Companies founded between 2010 and 2014, headquartered in California, who have received Series A funding. There are a total of 536 companies and 1207 investors, including:

An Infographic of Interest:

It was a hard choice, since there are so many interesting infographics related to customers and SaaS. But since this is a weekly compendium of interesting info – we can bring you another one next week!

Other Good Weekend Reads:

Great video discussion on Crossing the Developer-Designer-PM “Chasm” from Accel Partners. “It’s true, getting developers, designers and product managers on the same page is a huge challenge for tech companies. One solution: get them in the same space.”

Using a realtor/house showing analogy Roy Bahat explains why most demos are confusing. I certainly learned a lot from this post – common sense right in front of my nose. “Start with the first moment a user might learn of your product…”

Top 5 Lessons from Startup School – “As an entrepreneur building a company, you should always be focused on learning from those who came before you. With that goal in mind, I’ve documented five lessons from five entrepreneurs who shared their wisdom at Startup School.